AO
by Kuro49
Summary: Sequel to XZ. Raleigh/Yancy/Mako. It is Onibaba that brings her a case of the Kaiju Blues. This is Mako Mori as the first reported XZ phenomenon.


This is the sequel to XZ, so you should read that before this for clarity's sake. Honestly, I was just going to write Mako taking the Becket babes to see Gipsy Danger, and then maybe a threesome after, that obviously didn't happen. So have some _plot_ instead. (And yes, there will be a third part because I like to write in trilogies and I feel like there is more story to tell with this universe. Though, I have no idea how long it will take before I get that done... oops!)

XXX

**AO**

XXX

In the middle of a barren America with nothing to give, there is a motel room that is pungent with the scent of sex and last night's takeout all tangled into one.

Off of that beaten path, Mako Mori finds the Becket brothers with their minds built like the Wall of Life. She doesn't smile something feral, she craves to. But the one in her eyes is all telling when, like everything else, their heads come together as a strong sturdy thing that breaks with force.

And life has always been a funny thing to her.

The world is still coming to an end, and they are close enough to see the finish line in this arms race. Sensei leads, and she follows, moving in tandem, matching him stride for stride for stride. Stacker Pentecost is not her father, he doesn't need to be when she is already so much like him in the ways that matter.

Mako looks at the Marshal for permission, a silent tilt of her head that he returns.

She can't see into sensei's mind, read him thought for thought, she doesn't need to.

(He reads her just as well.)

.

She cries, her tears aren't blue, but they may as well be with the way the saline liquid leaves charred faint burns through everything but her skin. The noise from overhead is all consuming, she cries, and she doesn't stop.

And when it falls, a noise starts up in her head, a soft erratic humming she can't get a hold of.

Onibaba is dead.

But little Mako Mori isn't.

And blue is all she sees.

.

Standing without even a foot into the doorway, Mako imagines she will never really find the break between all that history, intertwined and woven in and out of each other when she looks at the two of them. They look like devastation on all fronts. But there she goes, touching her minds to theirs on the whim of a challenge from one Raleigh Becket.

_What did you imagine us to be?_

She takes his words and twists them into thoughts, brings the intentions out of the syllables and conviction out of spite.

She shows him, and by default _them_: Onibaba, Tokyo, May 15, 2016, and the little girl that steps out from all that blue breathing harder for it.

Stacker Pentecost is not her saviour, she can save herself just fine, but he does clean the blue off of her skin, the wicked acidic burn dissolving into something soothing with a single wordless promise that she'll be alright. It's not trust, it's a belief she holds close to heart when the man gently takes her shoe from her hands. There is blood trickling from his nose, but she doesn't see that.

He doesn't let her see that for a long, long time.

.

Yancy laughs, and it is a sound that pulls them all out of her head.

"PPDC must be desperate."

He speaks out loud and her eyes follow the sheets that he drags with him as he stands from the bed. Seeing the Beckets taking their respective place next to each other, pressed so close and not nearly close enough, is a strange sight. The two of them a mirrored mess of matching scars, and her fingers ache to fix the terrible mends they have made of each other.

It feels a lot like landing a blow in the Kwoon.

Even the score. Tap out. _Checkmate_.

(She doesn't play chess, never learned. But they do, they tell her in an unconscious push of memories reacting to her own vivid thoughts. They love to play chess when they are intoxicated and barely sitting upright on another motel bed with sheets that will only reek of them come morning.)

.

She doesn't know what she expects, but they aren't it.

She doesn't know why they say yes, but they do.

.

On Kodiak Island, they give her tests.

The facility is small, but the bed is big. Her legs don't reach the end where a clipboard hangs, one that she can only read her own name and nothing else. When she tries to touch it with her toes, the woman in the next bed lets out a laugh that makes Mako curious.

Tamsin Sevier is a flickering fire but a fire nonetheless. She is weak and she is strong and sensei loves her in ways Mako doesn't have a name for. Much like how she doesn't know the words to tell the doctors that she is contamination with a case of the Kaiju Blues. English is a language that is all structure. She doesn't understand it yet. And until she hones that insistent humming in the back of her head, she can't tell them about the flickers of strange things she can see of a world not at all like this one.

(It isn't until later that they finally give them a name. They call her the first of the XZs.)

Like Tokyo, and the Exclusion Zone there. She deems it apt.

She is Tokyo's daughter after all.

.

As they turn to go, Mako finds her eyes gravitating towards a run down car with enough bumper stickers to cover up a rear end that has seen much better days.

She isn't surprised to find that it is theirs, or that she knows the backseat has more legroom than it seems when he is pushing into him, slick with lube and spit and sweat and cum, one hand braced against the headrest of the passenger's seat and the other dragging his brother closer for another kiss.

He opens his mouth against his, lets out a soft breathless pant that sounds a whole lot like _Rals_— she blinks at the onslaught of memories not her own and the smile Yancy Becket sends her way is just enough to send a flush through her veins.

It's a heat that spreads and spreads and consumes her thoughts.

She looks away and catches the Marshal glancing back at her with something almost like concern. She bows her head, a reassurance that nothing is amiss.

_You're his daughter_. Raleigh thinks at her, and it is loud. He isn't accustomed to the sound and feel of someone else that isn't in the shape of Yance in his head, the knowledge a strange, familiar thing.

It is so much like coming home when his mind nestles against her own, in a fit that isn't all jagged edges.

_._

_Mako-chan._

Tamsin once asked what her favourite colour is. The question near silent in the dark of the facility. Mako closes her eyes with her reply, her head filling up with her favourite coat lost at war.

"Blue."

Mako tells her when she finds an equivalent to 「青」.

She goes for tests, and then several more follow-ups with sensei standing right there in the room every time. When they return her to the shared quarters, Tamsin takes her into the adjoining bathroom late at night and dyes streaks of blue in her hair.

"I like blue too."

She tells her in a conspiring whisper. She spins Mako around and the mirror is a reflection of a dying flame still burning brighter than anything else. Stacker cuts his losses the next morning and vows to never leave his adopted daughter with her again. (Not that he takes her away, he hasn't seen Tamsin quite so alive since they've retired from active duty in the Jaeger Program.)

Mako touches her hair and laughs.

Tamsin follows in succession.

And it isn't long before Stacker drops his guard too.

.

The flight back to Hong Kong is silent, their voices a soft white noise that washes over her in the confines of her head, just enough to cover the grating hum that doesn't ever really go away. She never imagines it to be like this. Now that she has this though, she can't imagine anything else.

.

When Tamsin's fire finally flickers out, they bury her in Hawaii.

Mako cries and catches every tear in the palm of her hands.

"We've got dragons to slay, Mako."

He takes her hand, the saline stinging like pinpricks.

Sensei and her run but they always come back. They always come back to the grave where Tamsin Sevier is buried, next to an empty casket and a tombstone marked _Luna Pentecost_.

And Mako, she doesn't ever let that blue in her hair fade.

Instead, she digs deeper into the noises of another universe connected to this one, through a breach at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and a tattered thread in her head.

.

"Are you a pilot, Mako?" Raleigh asks, eighteen hours later when they finally touch down in Hong Kong. The landing has taken much longer, the rain coming down harder as they close in on the last active Shatterdome in the world.

Her last home is what she doesn't need to say.

Mako bites back a wide smile at his question. Instead, she turns her head to the Marshal.

"Haven't you heard, Rangers?" Stacker Pentecost looks at them with a hint of a smile in his eyes when he motions them into the elevator. "The Mark Is are making the run for the end of the world with the rest of you."

.

There is the Mark III Restoration Project.

And then there is Coyote Tango.

.

(What they don't say is that you're only as good as your co-pilot. What they do say is that Stacker Pentecost is a Ranger that carries nothing into the drift. He brings nothing and she brings everything, and then some more. Mako is her sensei's co-pilot and there are dragons to be slain.)

.

She hasn't been in the same Shatterdome as Chuck Hansen in a long, long time. But it is all muscle memory as soon as Max comes her way, leash trailing as his humans follow. She doesn't need to glance up to imagine the face Chuck is probably making from a distance away, Mako only gets down on one knee to pet the bulldog.

Max pants happily, slobbering a shine on to the toe of her boot.

You don't need to watch the news to know who the Hansens are.

And even though Manila probably feels like a lifetime ago for the Beckets, Hercules Hansen greets them with the same kind of camaraderie since that three Jaeger drop back in 2019.

"It's good to have the two of you back." The Jaeger jockey from this war's glory days takes Raleigh's hand without hesitation. At that, Yancy simply forgoes any kind of pretence before he is pulling the man into a one armed hug, "it's good to be back, sir."

"Your girl looks good." Raleigh gestures to the Mark V, a gorgeous brawler that is all speed and strength.

"She better be, Striker's running point."

Their recognition is a bright spark in her head.

She looks up at them just as they survey the launch bays, and then the five remaining Jaeger standing strong. (They can't see Gipsy Danger from their vantage point on the Shatterdome floor but they can feel her nuclear heart beating just for them.)

"A five Jaeger drop." Yancy says, impressed. Raleigh looks between them all. "We're really going all out this time, aren't we?"

"Do we even have a choice?" Herc says, war-worn.

"Not if we've resorted to bringing back _these_ washouts."

The Chuck Hansen that makes his way to them is still the same brute force she's fought during her entire childhood in the Kwoons of Shatterdomes all around the world. And she intervenes before his dad can reprimand him.

"Chuck."

Mako nods at him in greeting before she is extending Max's leash back to him. There is a moment of hesitation, a fraction of a second, and then he takes it from her hands with a complicated expression on his face. And just as he is about to turn on his heels to stomp away, he throws the Beckets a glare for good measures, pauses, and gives her a returning nod.

"Mori."

It's more than she thought she would get out of him, and really, that's good enough for now.

.

The Becket brothers aren't apologetic, not when it matters. Not when it comes to each other. They stand too close, their hands brushing when they walk side by side. When they ran, their fears have never been baseless. And that's one thing Chuck will probably never quite understand. They are not one bit like she imagines. And Mako is okay with that too.

.

She takes them to Gipsy Danger with her nuclear heart that is all heat, liquid warmth that bleeds outwards, before anything else. She has her own war clock in her heart to match and their minds in hers.

"There she is." She says, even when she doesn't need to, standing behind them as they leaned over the railings to take in the sight of their Mark III beauty, the blue a blazon war paint.

Yancy lets out a whistle, and turns his head to grin at her.

"She looks new." Raleigh murmurs with something like awe in the way his eyes fall over the Jaeger.

"Better than new," Mako corrects, "she's one of a kind now."

_Unlike us_, she wants to add, not that it is a bad thing, not that any of this is bad, especially not when it can be so much worse when the monsters within them finally claw themselves out from their heads.

She feels them, like they are pressed against her sides.

_Just like us_, they remind her with resolve.

"She always was."

_Just like you._

"Thanks for taking care of our girl, Miss Mori."

Tearing her gaze from Gipsy, she finds that they are standing right next to her, just close enough for the sleeves of their jackets to brush against the cuff of her uniform.

"It was a pleasure, Mr. Becket."

She smiles at them, and the returning grin they flash at her reminds them of that single moment when the sunlight reflects off of the Alaskan snow. It doesn't snow in Tanegashima, and Mako has never been outside of the Anchorage Shatterdome, but the memory is an intimate thing that fits and folds until all she knows is a girl with a name like _Jaz_.

She meets Jazmine Becket in their heads, and she is a beauty in blue.

.

It doesn't happen all at once, a lot of things don't happen this way. But it is almost systematic when she opens the rift in her head to welcome them in. Thought for thought for thought. It's a fit, and they know it.

They know her inside out.

Mako has her knees on the bed when she slips a hand, one over each of their hearts.

The circuitry burns across their chests a map of their past, one she relives every time she is in their heads (she is there more than not). Yancy leans in to press a kiss to her neck, just as Raleigh puts a hand to her throat, fingertips hot against her skin where the blue strands graze the line of her jaw.

"You're sure, Mako?"

She smiles, something feral that she finally permits herself.

"You're in my head, _Rals_." Yancy's nickname for his baby brother slipping out from between her lips, like a habit that has been rubbed deep beneath her skin and flesh and bones for years, and years that she has never known him.

This doesn't change a thing.

(Except when it does.)

Reaching back, Yancy's fingers meet hers halfway, lacing them together in a lock that doesn't break. She leans in and touches her forehead to Raleigh's. A single thought that runs through all of their heads.

_Can't you tell?_

XXX Kuro

Note: ao is the reading of the kanji 青, which is blue in Japanese. :)

*Edit: There is now a sequel to this: WMD. (So apparently I updated this fic with the WMD text, and this is the part where I remind myself never to post fics at 4 in the morning, thank you to Windy Rein for bringing this to my attention.)


End file.
